A few other characters off to the left here that aren't on the main site. Think the cowboy and green ninja sword guy were shown a bit in the cinematic trailer. I'm putting fat tire-wearing gas mask man on my list of characters I am interested in now.

From the looks of it, they'll have plenty of character options for the person who doesn't have twitchy MLG skills. This is blizzard after all, they want as wide of an audience as possible.

The idea seems fine. It will of course come down entirely to the execution of the FPS mechanics. This kind of game needs to be extremely tight and smooth with its gameplay or it will feel clunky and tedious. However, given the lack of interesting shooters (literally guys, I still load up Quake Live for fucks sake) I hope they make it work.

BattleCry and BattleBorne are two. I can't remember the names of the others. Nosgoth is also pretty similar. (Though visually different)

TF2 / LoL hybrids. Focus on objectives rather than deathmatch, play as individually named characters rather than classes, more emphasis on special abilities rather than just shooting / jumping.

This doesn't look bad but it does look very familiar. Especially the reliance on catchphrases, character that look and sound cool to 13-year-olds, and central-casting stereotypes / archetypes. That said I am genuinely surprised Blizzard created some original characters, rather than just making another Warcraft / Starcraft / Diablo mashup.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.

Okay so here's something that Blizzard haters could point at in my mind and say, "It would make nothing if it wasn't Blizzard!"

There's no ties to anything. There's no prior lore. There's no real attachment. This is purely the Blizzard name on a box of something that's been done by a half-dozen other houses. If it blows things out of the water in numbers, they can point to this forever.

Honestly I no longer care what Blizzard release. They've shown quite clearly with D3 and the direction they took WoW in that all they know how to make is grind with a pretty skin. This'll be no different plus "micro"trans.

Not interested.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.

This will be huge because Blizzard. At least to start. I have no idea if they make much on Hearthstone, but I assume this would be similar from a revenue standpoint.

Yes, I don't see how it can not be not huge, as it's TF2 with more classes, new mechanics, new scenery, high production values and general "it's new!" hype.

I don't care for TF (and TF-like) games, so personally it holds no interests though.

I can easily see how this doesn't become huge. It's a game that's been done a ton for a long time. It'll be entertaining for a while but Blizzard managed to fuck up Diablo 3, so why would they do anything good here?

I like to think that, since Bliz also un-fucked Diablo after fucking it rightly so, they are capable of learning from their own mistakes and doing better. I mean, c'mon, how many companies these days have the financial wherewithal to host their own fan convention on a semi-consistent basis? You don't get their without the fans having your back.

I agree that what we've seen thus far is lacking and/or too similar to other market products, but I'm willing to give Bliz the benefit of the doubt for at least trying something new for them.

"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."

"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild

This was a brilliant business move -- cancelling Titan and making this game instead. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm aside, seeing what they are doing with Overwatch had a lot more impact on my opinion of Blizzard.

Of course the I.P. is going to have no previous ties, that's the point -- they wanted a new I.P. and are using the Blizzard name and marketing to build investment. Cinematic reminded me of Wildstar, actually, but I see the Pixar.

This game announcement officially announces the close of the MMO era, and I don't see the industry ever embracing that model as it was in the 00's. High-investment, high-risk, high failure rate.

Now it's all about small-scale competitive multiplayer which has LoL as king. I saw this game is targeted at people tired of TF2, however difficult it might be to get there. Anyone else make an immediate connection to Monday Night Combat?

If it's anything like most match-making systems these days, it won't be at first, but as the server starts to recognize one's noobness based on performance and stats, it'll pair you accordingly.Vs. the AI will probably be the recommended path for true noobs at first.

My preferred way to play TF was to swim with the masses, run around as a lose cannon, trying to get killls and not care about the objective.

Well, it's free. What risk is there? Worst case it becomes stale after a few hours.

Well, it's not like its a risk, but just realistically I don't have the inclination to install and fire up games just to try them if they haven't proven to be otherwise interesting. There are too many games out there that I do want to try to take the time out of my day to try ones I don't think I'll like.

Who knows, maybe as more information comes out it'll look worth trying again, it's not like I can change my mind later. But as Trippy points out, this is a big signal to me that they aren't going in a direction I care for that extends well beyond the 6v6 limit.

The trailer looks really weird to me, and I don't fully understand why. Is that in house blizzard?

It looks like a pixar movie.

It really does. Like I guess that's the modern version of 'cartoon' these days though. It also reminds me a LOT of the fairly recent LoL cinematic. To a point where I wonder if Blizz farmed the cinematic out... but Blizz has like super good in house cinematic people so that seems unlikely.

-edit-

Seriously, if someone just showed me that cinematic and said "new Disney movie" I wouldn't have even blinked. It looks exactly like something my nephew would beg me to watch with him.

Moreso than anyone but Valve, Blizzard's talent is making really well polished games. They may not be any good, but they'll still have that shine.

This is still kind of true, but this feels less true to me now.

Previously to me Blizzard polish meant graphical polish, performance polish, look and feel stuff (interface, sound, etc) as well as systems polish. I don't think that last one is the case any more. The systems are now often a weak point in games - to some degree this is true of Diablo, Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm.

They still know how to make the moment-to-moment action feel good and look nice but the weakness of these games is their core gameplay.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.